Krazy Keltic or Silly Seltic?
As I am in the habit of doing, I found myself in an idle moment the other day musing upon why the Scottish football team (that would be ‘soccer’ to my American readers) Glasgow Celtic is pronounced with a soft c (an ‘s’, in effect) rather than following the usual convention of the hard ‘c’ (or ‘k’) sound.
Read MoreWord Herd
Rounding up this week’s mystery words
Nothing specific this time around, word fans. More a collection of bits that have blipped on my radar recently. I’m going to have to stop talking to Mrs Joad, as she invariably says something to the effect of “hey, word man – what does (insert one of the many things I have no idea about) mean?” I am sent scurrying to my reference books and the good old internet in order to find an answer but luckily, that also gives me something to write about.
Read MoreMissing Letters
No, this is not a post about absentee landlords.
OK, two resolutions for the new year. First, post more on Word du Jour, second, stop the crap jokes. Anyone care to take bets on which one collapses first?
The idea for this post comes from my curiosity about why the name Dalziel is pronounced ‘Dee-ell’ in English. On my way to uncovering this mystery, I was reminded of other things, and thought “hello, why not make a post of it?” So here it is, a small introduction to some letters formerly used in the English alphabet. In truth, the alphabets vary from Saxon to Middle English to (mainly) Old English, but if you don’t mind me mixing and matching, I’ll continue.
Read MoreIt’s Whaturday?
Another post following a conversation in which I tried to be smug and clever and failed. Everyone knows where the days of the week get their names, right? I thought I did, but became hopelessly lost on definitions for Tuesday and Friday. So, it was a little like naming the seven dwarves: Grumpy, Sneezy, Doc, and the other four. In order to save you, dear reader, the ignominy of starting out clever and ending up looking – as the colloquial term would have it – a right dick, I present for you now the origins of names for days of the week.
Read MoreOnoes! Meme haz gon too far
Indulge me here, dear reader (you know who you are) while I regale you with a story of how a joke can be pushed a little too far – even on the internet, where the boundaries of taste and other things differ wildly from real life.
Lolcats – and lolcat speak – thatz liek soooo last year. What started off as an internet meme on message boards like 4Chan (caveat lector), and was popularized further by the big hitters in internet time-wasting, Digg and Reddit is now being written about in major publications. OK, they think it’s a new thing, and there are probably many slow news days, who am I to cast the first stone? Lolcat speak is a combination of purposely misspelled words and phrases, and the baby talk some people use when talking to their cats. In case you are reading this and haven’t had access to the internet for a couple of years, it can be best explained visually, here.
Read MoreAbsolutely ages
…that’s how long it’s been since I posted anything. Well, I’ve been busy, what with one thing and another, you know.
Nothing too weighty this time around – just a bit of fun. I must admit to having been quite stumped when asked by Madame Joad (who considers me something of an authority on English colloquialisms) what the ‘H’ in ‘Jesus H Christ’ stood for. My initial guess (wrong) was that it was there purely for emphasis, something like tmesis. I decided to research it on the oracle of all that is true and 100 per cent correct, the internet. To my utter surprise, several of the top Google hits put forward a very reasonable and plausible theory as to how the H got there. My favourite, not least because of the reference to the Lord’s Prayer: “Our father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name”, is this site, which provides a very interesting and believable etymology for the origins of this whimsical piece of blasphemy.
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